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Saturday, November 3, 2012

Hamboning

From the New York Times, "Re-creating Hambone, Body Music of the Past," by Glenn Collins, on 18 July 1987 -- It is undeniably the speediest of the many star turns in ''The Comedy of Errors,'' playing these days at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Yet, to Derique McGee, his hambone body-rhythm routine is never quite fast enough. ''I keep trying for that playing-card-in-the-bicycle-spoke sound,'' he said.

The body music called hambone is made by using the hands to slap the thighs and the chest muscles. ''I guess lots of people have never seen it,'' said the 23-year-old Mr. McGee of the art of hambone. ''Sometimes I'm asked if I invented it.''

In fact, hambone ''is a living bit of black history, a neglected part of our heritage that flourished in minstrel shows and vaudeville,'' he said.

By default, Mr. McGee has found himself carrying on something of a one-man hambone crusade in the attempt to refurbish its status. Its inclusion in the Lincoln Center Theater production of Shakespeare's comedy makes the play a showcase of the contemporary variety arts, including clowning, ensemble juggling, acrobatics, tap-dancing and stilt-walking. Origins in African Dance

According to Dr. Joseph Boskin, professor of history and Afro-American studies at Boston University, Mr. McGee's efforts to revive hambone ''are representative of a growing movement in America to keep alive elements of black culture that have survived through the generations.''

Like rap music, which has been traced to African roots,the rhythmic patting motion of hambone has its origin in West African dance, ''where movement was a form of communication and religious ceremony,'' said Professor Boskin. It ''was refined in the plantations,'' he added. 'A Lost Art' to Be Preserved

Mr. McGee learned hambone on the streets of Berkeley, Calif., the city where he grew up. At age 15, Mr. McGee began to master other variety arts. Now, in ''Comedy of Errors,'' he performs acrobatics, unicycling, juggling, hat tricks, cartwheels and handsprings.

Nevertheless, as he honed such skills, Mr. McGee's fascination with hambone grew. ''I kept making up more and more stuff that no one taught me,'' he said. In Mr. McGee's own solo clown show, he has incorporated other elements, including finger-popping and mouth-popping as well as movements from hand jive, another traditional rhythmic art.

Although the etymology of the word hambone is debated, ''It makes sense that the word comes from hitting your thigh, your hambone,'' said Mr. McGee.

Mr. McGee has taught hambone to children and adults across the country and even at a circus-arts program in Copenhagen. ''I feel this is a lost art that needs to be passed on,'' he said. (source: The New York Times)

Runaway Slave Gordon. From the Smithsonian Photography Initiativ e, "Photography changes the way we record and respond to social...

Capoeira

African Martial Arts of Brazil

About the Banjo by Tony Thomas

The banjo is a product of Africa. Africans transported to the Caribbean and Latin America were reported playing banjos in the 17th and 18th centuries, before any banjo was reported in the Americas. Africans in the US were the predominant players of this instrument until the 1840s.

Charleston Slave Tags and Slave Badges

Badge laws existed in several Southern cities, urban centers such as Mobile and New Orleans, Savannah and Norfolk; the practice of hiring out slaves was common in both the rural and urban South. But the only city known to have implemented a rigid and formal regulatory system is Charleston.

MANILLA: MONEY OF THE SLAVE TRADE

Manilla. Manillas were brass bracelet-shaped objects used by Europeans in trade with West Africa, from about the 16th century to the 1930s. They were made in Europe, perhaps based on an African original.Once Bristol entered the African trade, manillas were made locally for export to West Africa.

SLAVE CURRENCY: African Slave Trade Beads

In Africa, trade beads were used in West Africa by Europeans who got them from Venice, Holland, and Bohemia. They used millions of beads to trade with Africans for slaves, services, and goods such as palm oil, gold, and ivory. The trade with Africans was so vital that some of the beads were made specifically for Africans.

Slave Trade Currency: Cowry Shells

Long before our era the cowry shell was known as an instrument of payment and a symbol of wealth and power. This monetary usage continued until the 20th century. If we look a bit closer into these shells it is absolutely not astonishing that varieties as the cypraea moneta or cypraea annulus were beloved means of payments and eventually became in some cases huge competitors of metal currencies.

Bunce Island Slave Factory

Cannons with the Royal Crest

Adanggaman

Africans Making Slaves of Africans

Ota Benga The Man in the Bronx Zoo

Ota Benga (1883-1916) was an African Congolese Pygmy, who was put on display in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo in New York in1906

Railroads and Slave Labor

North America's four major rail networks — Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National — all own lines that were built and operated with slave labor.

Sculptor Augusta Savage

"Lift every voice and sing" by Augusta Savage: New York World's Fair.

Afro-Uruguay Spirit of Resistance in Candombe

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Tintin: Sinister Racist Propaganda

Tintin has been an inspiration for generations. But his status as a paragon of wholesome adventure is under threat, thanks to a court bid to ban one of his books, Tintin in the Congo, for its racist portrayal of Africans.

W.E.B. DuBois

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." -- W.E.B. DuBois

Slave Tortures

Portugal Slave Trade

1501-1866 Portugal transported 5,848,265 people from Africa to the Americas.

French Slave Trade

1501-1866 France transported 1,381,404 Africans to America.

Great Britain Slave Trade

1501-1866 The British transported 3,259,440 Africans to the Americas.

Spain Slave Trade

1501-1866 Spain transported 1,061,524 Africans to the Americas

Denmark Slave Trade

1501-1866 Denmark transported 111,041 people from Africa.

United States Slave Trade

1501-1866 The USA transported 305,326 Africans to the Americas.

Netherlands Slave Trade

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?" — Marcus Tullius Cicero